Monday, July 27, 2015

When one exposure is enough

Sent to Scientific American, July 27, 2015

The idea that we remember things better when we retrieve them more frequently from memory, as claimed in "Building The 21st-century Learner," (July 15) applies only to facts and concepts that are irrelevant to us. When a fact or concept solves a problem that is of genuine interest, one exposure is enough. That's why this poem is nonsense:

Do you love me?
Or do you not?
You told me once.
But I forgot.

Let's stop worrying about better ways of getting students to master material that is irrelevant to them. Let's make school more intellectually compelling.

Stephen Krashen

original article:
http://www.nature.com.ezproxy.uvm.edu/scientificamerican/journal/v313/n2/full/scientificamerican0815-54.html

For full text of the article, plus Susan Ohanian commentary: http://susanohanian.org/show_research.php?id=583